


It Took Me By Surprise

by indevan



Series: Rock Band AU [35]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Baby Shower, F/M, Fluff, M/M, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 10:49:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14211525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: Bulma smiles to herself at her planning.  An afternoon with her friends celebrating her.  The perfect time.





	It Took Me By Surprise

**Author's Note:**

> [AU timeline](http://vertigoats.tumblr.com/post/166537761367/since-after-the-first-few-the-fics-in-rock-band)

It’s startlingly banal, coming back to reality.  Even after all these years of abnormality being the normalcy of her life, Bulma can’t believe how  _ regular _ things can be.  Maybe it was because movies and books always had the girlfriends of rockstars be wide-eyed innocents from their hometown who the rockstar cheated on repeatedly or messy, equally destructive wildfires who shot up in hotel bathrooms with them.

The reality is far less ridiculous.  While she and Vegeta  _ have _ gone on incredibly intense, disastrous benders together, it’s never gotten to that point and though she has no proof either way, she trusts him enough not to cheat on her while he’s on the road.  Trust--that’s a weird thing. Both of them are fucked mentally to the point of assuming the worst but being an adult, being in a longterm relationship like theirs, they’ve learned to work through it.

She’s gone with him on tour before.  The time before last. They all went and he would bring Trunks on stage with him and put him on his shoulders while he played guitar.  Let him run around and sing into the microphone in a voice that sounds older than he is. This last tour, she stayed behind but let him bring Trunks.  She was suffering through morning sickness and pregnancy pains and having a five-year-old running her ragged wouldn’t help matters.

Now her boys are back and she can have her baby shower and it’s all so decidedly and delightfully normal.

They rented out a small bistro not far from their new apartment.  The staff has set up a table for the presents.

“Oh, good,” Vegeta says. “A spot for this fucking cake.”

He puts the sheet cake on the table with disdain as if he isn’t the one who found the bakery and ordered it for her.  But that’s just how he is. She knows this.

“Can I have some cake?”

“No.”

“Daddy!”

“No.  No one else is even here yet.”

Trunks pouts furiously but there isn’t much else he can do.  Bulma figures he’ll be over it by the time the others get here--or at least when Goten does.  Kakarrot’s taken to bringing his family on tour as well and Goten takes to the stage as much as Trunks does.  Very rarely has she seen one without the other.

Bulma sinks into a chair and places both hands on her stomach.  This pregnancy has been more difficult than Trunks’s had been. She’ll be happy when baby Bulla is here and no longer kickboxing her bladder.

“Hell yeah!  Baby time!”

Caulifla all but kicks the door open.  Surrounding staff gives her a reprimanding look, which she of course ignores.  Kale stands a little ways behind her, carrying a gift bag.

“Thanks for inviting us,” she says in her quiet, mumbling way.

Caulifla rushes to her and leans down towards her stomach.

“How’s my godbaby?”

Vegeta comes up and hooks his arm around her shoulders to pull her back.

“Will you stop calling her that?” he asks. “I’m lapsed as fuck, Bulma’s agnostic, and you’re Jewish.  No one is anyone’s god-anything.”

They glare at one another for a moment before Caulifla breaks into loud laughter.

“Um, where can I put this?” Kale asks quietly, lifting the bag.

Bulma gestures to the table and she places it next to the cake.

“Cauli!”

Trunks runs up to her and Caulifla kneels down to catch him in her arms.

“Hey, Trunksy.”

She hugs him tightly, swiveling her body side to side as she does.  Caulifla has been a fixture in their lives since she and Vegeta got back together when Trunks was a baby.  She’s family to the point where she asked (in her Caulifla way, of course) Vegeta to be her “best person” in her wedding to Kale at the end of the summer.

The door to the restaurant opens again, this time revealing Lapis and Raditz.  Bulma’s honestly surprised they’re on time--even early--since they constantly end up distracted by their own horniness.  Raditz carries Bardock in a little sling across his body and Lapis holds a wrapped gift.

“Hey,” she says, waving from her chair.

Trunks breaks away from Caulifla and dashes over to Raditz. “Baby!  I wanna see the baby!”

Raditz laughs and drops to one knee to show off the sleeping Bardock.  Trunks reaches out one hand and gently pats his head.

“Good baby,” he says almost reverently.

Lapis places his gift near Kale’s and gives a wave.

“Have you heard from your sister?” Bulma asks. “She hasn’t replied to my text.”

“She isn’t coming,” he explains. “She wanted me to make up an excuse for her but the truth is so much funnier: Marron had explosive diarrhea and it’s everywhere.   _ Everywhere.” _

She can imagine.

“So that means that we only have your brother, Chi-Chi and the boys, Tien and Yamcha, and then Launch is coming with her girlfriend.”

She wanted to keep the shower small with just couples.  Plus, she can’t see someone like Turles at a goddamn baby shower.  It’s like having the Ramones play at a kindergarten graduation.

“Launch is coming?” Raditz asks. “Shit, I haven’t seen her since Kakarrot’s wedding.”

“I know, right?  That’s why I invited her.”

Bulma smiles to herself at her planning.  An afternoon with her friends celebrating her.  The perfect time.

\--

Nothing can ever go smoothly.  Bulma’s long since learned that but, foolishly, she thinks that maybe an outing  _ won’t _ end in some kind of disaster.  Before Launch showed up, the only speedbump was Goten glaring at Bardock when he arrived.  He apparently is jealous of his cousin taking his uncle’s attention away from him, but even that was resolved the moment he found Trunks.

“Sorry we’re late.”

Launch walks in and Bulma first notices the woman directly behind her as someone she knows.  More specifically it’s Mai, her college classmate and unknowing instigator of her current relationship.  Seeing them together makes her think that, despite its size, this city is ridiculously small. Then she see what she’s holding in her arms.

The girl is maybe two with dark curls all over her head.  She clings to her mother and looks at them all with oddly familiar eyes.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were bringing your kid,” she says and catches Chi-Chi’s eye as she’s the closest.

“Is that alright?  I mean, it’s a baby shower.”

Launch has a rough edge to her voice and she sounds almost wary.

“No--I mean.  Obviously. I just didn’t know you  _ had _ a kid.”

She sees her shoulders lower and she gives a laugh.

“Right.  Yeah. This is Dinna.”

“Hi,” she says in a little voice, waving her hand.

She’s precious, really, in her corduroy jumper and turtleneck.  There’s something about her, though, that Bulma can’t shake. An air of familiarity in her face and eyes.  She glances at the others who have all eyes on them as well, wondering if they’re feeling it, too. Raditz reacts first, standing up from his seat.

“Does he know?”

And it all falls into place.  The elephant in the room immediately addressed by the person that would know best.  Bulma looks to Yamcha who rolls his lips in and widens his eyes. He mouths “yikes” at her and she has to agree.

“No,” Launch says finally.

“Doesn’t he have the right to?”

Raditz quirks a brow.  He’s looking at her like a proper punk tough with his wild hair and nose rings, but his hand is supporting his son still sleeping in a sling.  Launch puts her daughter down.

“Go play,” she says, pointing to where Gohan is keeping an eye on the kids.

She toddles off, unaware of the tension between the adults in the room.  Gohan, though, seems attuned to it, his dark eyes watching them all curiously.  Trunks and Goten are too involved in whatever game they’re playing to pay mind. Baby Bulla takes this moment to kick her and Bulma puts her hands over her stomach to say, “Not now.”

“Well?” Raditz prompts.

“I didn’t come here to get into a fight,” Launch says.

Behind her, Mai puts her hands comfortingly on her girlfriend’s shoulders but Bulma can see the confusion written all over her face.  She probably didn’t think to ask who the father of Launch’s kid was. Bulma, keen as she is, can guess it.

“You come here with my best friend’s kid and are like ‘Oh I don’t wanna start anything’?  Bullshit.”

Lapis stands up and puts a hand on his arm, that he seems to ignore.

“Listen,” Launch says irritably, taking a step forward.

Bulma isn’t sure what to do.  Part of her is living for the drama but the other part of her doesn’t want her baby shower ruined by fighting.  Luckily, someone intervenes before she has to.

“Both of you listen,” Vegeta snarls. “I don’t give a fuck that she had Turles’s kid.  You assholes can figure that shit out  _ after. _  We’re here to celebrate my girlfriend and our daughter so shut up and let me cut the goddamn cake.”

Never has she been more grateful for her boyfriend’s terrible temper.  He sits back down and she reaches out for his hand.

“Thanks.”

Vegeta shrugs but there’s a slight smile tugging on the corner of his mouth.

\--

Launch has always known she’d have to face the music eventually.  Timing has never been her thing. Her twin sister, Lunch, now she has it together.  Always on time, never late, never tipsy enough to fuck a guy just to see what his pierced dick looks like.  She had  _ meant _ to tell Turles, but then he was releasing an album and touring and she met Mai and.  Things got muddled.

“You never said he was the bassist from Apetail,” Mai says on the ride home from the shower.

“It never came up,” she says, which is a shitty defense but the only one that she has.

She looks in the car seat where Dinna is playing with plastic toys, humming to herself.  Regardless of the circumstances surrounding her conception, she loves her little girl. And--Raditz is right, really.  Turles  _ does _ have the right to know about his daughter.  That’s why she said Raditz could tell him and why she’s inviting him to their apartment this evening.

“Dinna, baby,” she says, “do you want to meet your daddy?”

She’s been asking about him, anyway, when she saw other families in the parks.  Nothing probing, being two, but just a few “where daddy?” every now and then. It’s time.  Launch knows this.

Fuck.

“Daddy?” she asks and then nods, her whole body getting into it.

“It was a hook-up,” she says, turning back to look at Mai sitting in the driver’s seat. “A one time thing.  Y’know.”

She nods. “Yeah, I.  I dunno. It’s weird.  Dinna has a famous dad.”

It’s weirder to think that Turles is famous.  She remembers him coming in with the others whenever Kakarrot was working a shift at the record shop, fucking around and being too loud.

Waiting for him to arrive is worse.  She would have done it herself, not made Raditz the middle man, but she doesn’t have his number.  She thinks she might need it now in case Dinna needs anything. Shit. Maybe she should have just tossed the whole baby shower and not shown up.  It would save her the headache now.

The knock comes at the door and she lets Mai answer it.  He comes in, looking like he always does, but it’s apparently hot enough that he’s ditched the leather jacket.

“Hey,” he says to Mai and he looks.  Relaxed. His usual drawl is there, his hands are loosely in his back pockets. “Where is she?”

Launch doesn’t know if he means her or Dinna but Mai points to the living room.  As he walks, she sees that Turles’s shoulders are tense, his steps careful. Dinna peers up at him and Launch wonders if, somehow, she knows.  She knows this man who shares her eyes and who gave her her dark hair.

Turles crouches down and gives a slight wave.  It’s probably the first time Launch has ever seen him look nervous.

“Hi,” he says to Dinna.

“Metal.” She says. “Your face.”

Right--she’s never really seen someone with as many piercings as Turles.  Dinna reaches out, grabs his hand, and turns it over to examine it.

“Star,” she says very seriously, placing her little fingers over the tattoo on the web of skin between his thumb and forefinger.

“Yeah,” he says. “I have another star on my shoulder blade.  It looks different, though.”

She nods and says, “Who you?”

He lifts his head to look at Launch for the first time and she doesn’t know what to do except nod.  He looks back at Dinna.

“I’m your dad.”

“Daddy?”

“Yeah.  I didn’t know about you ‘til now, but--I’m gonna be here for you.  Whenever you want me.”

She isn’t sure how Dinna is going to react.  Finally, she holds her arms up.

“Carry you,” she says.

“She means ‘me,’” Launch fills in. “She wants you to hold her.”

Turles scoops her into his arms and hugs her.  Dinna presses her cheek against his shoulder.

“Two mommy and a daddy,” she says contentedly.  Pulling back she adds, “What daddy name?”

“Turles.”

“Tullece,” she repeats.

He laughs. “Close enough.”

They look happy and Launch feels a stab of regret from keeping them apart.  She’ll do better. For both of them. Mai comes up to stroke her shoulders.

“How are you doing, Goldie?” she asks.

“Good.  This was the right thing to do.”

Her girlfriend nods “It was.  I still can’t believe Dinna’s dad is famous, though.”

Launch groans.

“Yeah, don’t let him overhear that.  It’ll go right to his head.”

\--

Bulma heaves a sigh as she drops onto the couch.  Instinctively, her hands go to her middle to rest on the crest of her bump.

“God forbid we can have one regular goddamn day,” Vegeta grumbles as he comes to sit next to her.

Trunks is unbothered by the turn of events and is using the bathroom per his father’s instructions upon arriving home.

“Yeah…I can’t believe Turles has a kid.” She ponders that statement and his known promiscuity for a moment before adding, “I mean, one that we know of.”

Vegeta shakes his head.

“Nah, it’s probably just her.  He likes anal too much for there to more than one.”

Bulma groans and drops her head back on the couch.

“Why do you all just  _ know _ these things about each other?”

He shrugs and she truly wonders if he knows because everyone in Apetail simply  _ knows _ gross details about each other or the fact that he’s also slept with Turles.  She decides to try her luck with the latter because talking about this is easier than talking about what she  _ really _ wants to.

“Oh, right--you’ve, like, all slept together.”

Vegeta curls a lip and shakes his head. “That’s not true.  I haven’t done shit with Raditz or Broly.”

Bulma starts to nod but catches herself.

“Wait.  There’s a name suspiciously absent from that list.”

“Yeah.”

He gets up off of the couch and walks towards the kitchen.  Heaving herself to her feet, Bulma follows him.

“It’s wild, though,” she says, continuing the thread from earlier. “He had no idea…”

Vegeta nods and starts opening and closing the cabinets.  She wonders if he’s at all catching on to the implication of her words but the sound of a toilet stops her before she can ask.

“I’m done!” Trunks calls.

He steps out into the hallway and thrusts both arms into the air.

“Did you wash your hands?” Vegeta asks without looking.

His arms drop and he grumbles as he trudges back into the bathroom.  She comes up and places her hand on his arm. He closes whatever cupboard he was in and turns to look at her.

“What?”

“It reminds me of something, that’s all.”

He quirks a brow but she isn’t sure if it’s in question or not.  She’s lucky, normally. Vegeta’s up in his own head half of the time but his face betrays everything.  Every emotion he can’t articulate is written on his face. It’s part of why she trusts him whenever they’re apart.  If he was catting around on her, she’d know immediately. Still, even after all these years, he’s cagey and sometimes it’s a vault shut so tightly that she can’t even discern his features.

“It’s not the same,” he says finally.

“Isn’t it, though?”

She cups her hands around her stomach.

“No.”

It’s spoken abruptly and he moves past her, out of the kitchen.  Bulma follows even though, honestly, she wishes that he would stay put.  She can’t walk for terribly long these days.

“I kept Trunks from you,” she says to put it out in the open. “The entire pregnancy and the first five months of his life.”

He makes that pissy little face of his and she wonders what it means.

“It was different,” he says again. “We weren’t together and, besides, even if I knew, I couldn’t leave the tour.  Not like I could now.”

Right.  When they were just starting out.  It seems like eons ago.

“And five months sure as fuck isn’t two  _ years. _  It’s completely different.”

A contrary part of her hates when he’s more rational than her but she’s glad.  They’re growing up (well they ought to be, she thinks, since they’re both turning thirty next year).  She presses her back against him since it’s the easiest way to hug and she brings his arms around her waist.

Trunks come out of the bathroom, brandishing his hands.

“I’m clean!” he says loudly and then skids to a stop in front of them.  Schooling his face into a look of disgust, he shakes his head. “Gross.”

Despite that, though, when Bulma holds her arm out, he goes to her and tucks himself under it.  She smiles. The day was far from perfect but she has her boys and she’ll soon have her little girl so.  It’s good.

\--

“Baby.”

Dinna stares at Bardock intently who blinks back in confusion.

“This is weird as shit,” Turles says. “Our kids on a playdate.  Did you ever think this would be a thing?”

Raditz shakes his head.  It’s all pretty bizarre. He’s always wanted kids, vaguely, but he never thought it would be a reality.  None of this does, really. He’s still in awe of his life: famous rock drummer with a smoking hot husband and a gorgeous little boy.

Fuck.  Life is strange.

Stranger, still, seeing Turles with a kid.  Dinna looks like him although her expression is more serious than he’s ever seen Turles’s.

“You baby?” she asks, pointing at Raditz.

He nods, unsure how else to respond.  Between his nephews and Trunks, he’s been around his fair share of toddlers but Dinna is so direct that he’s caught off-guard.  Satisfied with his response, she bursts into a wide smile and pats Bardock’s head affectionately. He lets out a happy gurgle in response and waves his chubby arms.

“Have you told Broly yet?”

Turles freezes for a moment from his spot watching the kids from the couch.

“No.  I mean.  I will eventually but--”

He shuts his mouth and shakes his head.  These past couple years, Raditz has learned that if you want to fluster Turles, you simply mention his feelings for Broly.  He still hasn’t acted on them, waiting for Broly to make the first move. That, he thinks, is a loser’s game. He understands his intent but knows that, if he had his way, Broly would never act on his feelings ever.  Supposedly he had had a crush on Raditz for nearly a decade before he drunkenly tried to kiss him on that rooftop.

A kid throws a wrench into that already slow moving system of gears.

“It’s been a week.  You should tell him.”

“I guess.  It’s hard when we don’t live together anymore.”

He doesn’t think that’s wholly fair but he lets it slide.  It’s a proper, best friend thing to do.

“He walk?” Dinna asks.

She’s pointing at Bardock who’s still sitting up on his blanket.  Raditz shakes his head.

“Not yet.  He’s only just mastered sitting up without that...thing.” He makes a vague gesture to signify the cushioned horseshoe lying unused in the corner of their living room.

Dinna nods in understanding.

“Daddy,” she says, turning to Turles. “Snack?”

He starts, still unused to the title and nods.

“Yeah, sure.”

He sees him smile as he scoops her up and Dinna loops her arms around his neck.

“What do you want?”

“Squeezie.”

He shakes his head. “Absolutely not.  You’ve had two today already. You’re gonna shit your head off.”

Raditz snorts.  It’s good to know, at least, that fatherhood isn’t going to change him.


End file.
